Mobile Coding Challenge, FTW!
If you managed to check out the Mobile session at MWNW, you are probably aware of Windows Phone 7 and how it represents a complete departure from previous versions of Windows Mobile. The phone is efficiently organized around dynamic hubs labeled People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace and Office. This provides the developers great opportunities and easy ways to create killer apps.
Come learn how to build Windows Phone 7-based applications using XNA and silverlight know how . There will also be a Coding Challenge “Hackfest” in the afternoon session, we will put you into action, building a Windows Phone 7-based applications on spot — So bring your laptop, install the free development tools and build an application for the phone with support from application development experts of Windows Phone 7!
Register now-Mississauga-June 23 morning -briefing, afternoon -coding challenge.
Vancouver June 25- morning -briefing, afternoon -coding challenge
Sponsor Webcast: DELL Presents Internet Apps and Built-In Recovery Plans on June 9th – 1 PM EDT
When most people think about the web, they rarely think about the hardware side of the story. We are proud to have Dell sponsor the FTW! Coding Competition with awesome prizes alongside the Dell workstations at Make Web Not War 2010. Dell participated this year because they believe in the importance of great hardware when developing for the web. Dell would like to invite anyone interested in web apps and ecommerce Apps to join them live webcast they are holding on June 9th about Web App disaster recovery options.
Live Webcast | June 9th, 2010
Join Andre Webley, Tenzing Senior Solutions Engineer and Roy Swift, Enterprise Systems Consultant at Dell to discuss why every Internet application should have a built-in disaster recovery plan. With Web and Ecommerce applications becoming more business critical, downtime is simply not an option. Are you adequately prepared for a disaster? Join us as we explore key considerations to ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster, so that your organization is ready for anything. Interested in attending? you can register here
Cheers!
@phponwindows
Announcing the New FTW Champion: Timothy Dalby!
The announcement we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived, the winner of the 2010 FTW! Coding Competition is FindAHome by Timothy Dalby! 
Find-A-Home revolutionizes the way you search for a house, it uses an innovative decision engine that simplifies the process of finding a new home by automatically researching the area a house is located in and providing each home with a score based on a number of metrics. The engine uses a number of data sets, including the locations of City Parks, Schools, Bus Stops, Police Stations, Fire Stations, and Recreation Centers to build a ranking for each house. FindAHome makes extensive use of the Edmonton Opendata catalogue and proves what can be when more cities start to open up their data.
The Final showdown..
In the first round each finalist did a 10 minute presentation on their respective apps. Dressed as generals, each contestant pitched convincing arguments on why they should be the next FTW! champion. FindAHome stood out among the rest; it showed a clear purpose that would be useful to any home buyer and was currently available to the citizens of Edmonton. He had written the app by himself in only about o3 weeks, never even knowing what Open Data was before entering the competition. The second round commenced with counter questions by each contestant. Francois Mazzerole from project Tholus and Dashan Yue from Taxicity both defended their apps valiantly. However, when it came to round 3, the MWNW attendees decided that FindAHome was a champion among two other stellar apps, Taxicity and Project Tholus (Who came 2nd and 3rd). Timothy Dalby won the grand prize at MWNW, as well as the bonus prizes for using Open Data, Windows Azure and SQL services. Timothy took a home a total of $8K worth of Dell Prizes! Congratulations Timothy on becoming the FTW! Coding Competition Champion!
Did You Like Make Web Not War? Comment Below!
Across the east coast, web developer geeks everywhere pooled together for a week long event of social networking, developer codefests, web conferencing seminars, rockband showdowns and panel discussions all having to do with developing on the beloved web at MonDev aka Montreal Open Source Week with grand finale at Make Web Not War 2010 (#webnotwar). Tell us what you thought, so we can make this happen next year! There is so much going on with creating the ultimate web conference experience, it’s sometimes hard to catch the essence of how good (or bad) the event was, with a small portion of evaluations hastily collected towards the end. So we need your help, if you liked Make Web Not War and want to see it again next year, comment below and/or complete your session eval online (http://webnotwar.bnotions.ca) on how much you liked and what you liked at the event! If you have a blog post about your recap too – be sure to include the link for us all to share to help us continue doing this event in the future! <COMMENT> At the end of your comment, please end off with the answer to ONE question: “Would you like Make Web Not War 2010 to happen again next year?” </COMMENT> Here is a recap of a few of the elements of this year’s Make Web Not War in Montreal:
- #DEVTrain (aka #nerdtrain) from Toronto to Montreal on the VIA Rail with http://devtrain.ca GPS tracker
- Sessions/Schedule – Main Room panel discussion & Technical Room Format
- Speakers – Including keynote speaker Joel Perras and various local open source & Microsoft community evangelists
- CodeFest – Run by devLAB Montréal, PHPQuebec & Windows Azure
- Lounge – DELL working stations, Microsoft Hardware mountain, Green Screen Video Crew, Rockband Area, TechDays booth, WebsiteSpark surveys
- Food – Comfort food including pasta, hamburgers, hotdogs and lots of coffee
- Smile for the Cameras – Avatar Captures by Chris Luckhardt & Video Filming Crew by The Biz Media
- Giveaways – 2GB USB keys with guitar picks (collect all 5 for entry into After Party)
- FTW! Coding Competition – showdown featuring #findahome, #tholus, #taxicity
- Twitter Wall – built by Jet Cooper
- Online Evaluation App – built by BNOTIONS
- After Party at Jello Martini Bar & Lounge – catered by Schwartz & sushi
Few image recaps from our Flickr Pool (be sure to tag your photos at #webnotwar to appear in the pool at http://www.flickr.com/groups/webnotwar)
WHY THE @&*# IS MICROSOFT DOING THIS?
Microsoft contributing to Open Source projects? Organizing Make Web Not War and MonDev? Is it an evil ploy to take over the world, or has “the empire” gone soft?
Some say it’s for the love of technology, web developers and designers. Some say we’re desperate, and being forced to “deal” with Open Source. Others, like the many open source communities we work with worldwide and in Canada: PHP Quebec, Impress CMS, TikiWiki, Vanilla Forums, Status.net, PHUG and many others, say it’s good for their projects, as it exposes those PHP apps to more people, particularly those who run Windows “shops”.
We couldn’t agree more. But it also just makes good business sense! See why on PORT25.ca — the voice of a small, but feisty Open Source strategy team at Microsoft Canada.
Oh, and if you are at Make Web Not War event – we want to talk to you! Open is also about being open to feedback and commentary from the community, and we welcome all feedback we get.
We’re the people probably wearing one of the RED shirts like this…
… or the people in the corner getting kicked (let’s hope not)…
… and if you are not at the event, please send us a tweet @PHPonWindows or feel free to rant, I mean, comment below!
Nik G
Open Source Strategy Lead at Microsoft Canada
twitter: @Nik_G
WebCamp, WebCom, & W3Quebec
Je ne parle pas francais! Mandatory Grade 9 French has never failed me more than at this exact moment. 
Speaker Spotlight: Nathaniel Bagnell
Nathaniel Bagnell is an Interactive Developer at Digiflare, an interactive agency based in Toronto, Ontario. He brings to the table technical skills in (X)HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the JQuery Framework, along with business sense and new ideas, all in one mix with industry-proven experience. Before joining Digiflare, Nathaniel was hired right out of high school by a Microsoft gold certified partner public company, as a developer for their web solutions team. After having worked for a little over two years, he started his post-secondary bachelor of commerce degree; majoring in Information Technology Management with a minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation.Sponsor Spotlight: BNOTIONS
Conferences sometimes have the notorious reputation of overflowing promotional items that we all know eventually end up in the neglected pile of recyclables. That is why for this year’s Make Web Not War 2010, we have all your much needed sponsor and partner information easily accessible for download and review in complimentary 2GB Make Web Not War USB keys for the first 200 attendees to the event. Adding to the paperless effort, we’d like to welcome our newest Make Web Not War sponsor BNOTIONS. Founded in 2006, the team focuses on back-end web development within the open source space and are expanding into the mobile market. Working closely with Modern Retail, they’ve recently been deploying Wordpress on Windows for the last 6 months and have just built a mobile evaluation app to rate Make Web Not War Speakers! Check it out at http://webnotwar.bnotions.ca
Why did you sponsor Make Web Not War?
BNOTIONS is always looking to celebrate open-source. After a very successful and highly regarded event last year in Toronto – we jumped at the opportunity to get involved. The #nerdtrain could have also had something to do with it!
What do you hope this event will help achieve?
Hopefully this event can help ensure that any walls that prevent people or companies from taking advantage of the latest exciting technologies continue to be broken down. As an industry, we do not have the time or the inclination to feel trapped by inflexible, closed systems. This event is an awesome example of old, stagnant approaches being tossed aside, and fresh open source alternatives being embraced.
What are you most looking forward to at the event?
The Big “O” (Open Data & The Social Web) caught our eye. We look forward to learning more about their application framework ODAF. We have known Brendan Sera-Shriar for a few years now, and he always delivers the goods when it comes to spreading awareness of Open Source technologies and techniques. We are excited to see what he has to demonstrate in the Windows / WordPress session. And of course, the team has put a lot of research and planning into this event. We can only imagine how awesome the after party is going to be.
DemoCamp: Ignite + a round of Karaoke
In the style of the DemoCamp quick Ignite presentations and in the spirit of the massive amount of Tweeting happening at MonDev, here’s a recap of tonight’s presentations in nearly140 characters:
Vanilla, truly the “sweetest forum on the web” gives experts and less-than-experts the ability to create discussion forums that grow online communities
devLab Montreal gathers professional “geeks” to discuss and play with technology based on a predetermined theme. First session: Codefest @ MWNW!
Tiki has an incredible new project: BigBlueButton, a full, free web conferencing system including audio, video, chat, and screen sharing.
Yorkville Media Center offers a full 9 week curriculum on a ton of programming languages, marketing, and management and walks its students through the entire process of building for the web.
SafeKidZone is an app that acts as a virtual Neighbourhood Watch and protects kids from abduction and emergency by immediately alerting friends/family and even escalating to 911 in case of an emergency.
Confoo.ca is a conference that presents international experts in Java, .Net, PHP, Python and Ruby. And good news, it looks like there’s another Confoo in the works for 2011!
The Ignite presentations were followed up by a few rounds of PowerPoint Karaoke and a chance to speak further with the evening’s presenters. I learned a few more things about these projects that got me really excited. First, BigBlueButton is available right now! I can’t wait to use this for my next group project in school. Also, after seeing the Yorkvill Media Center presentation, I am convinced I want to take one of these courses. Definitely take the time to check it out
Oh, and what’s PowerPoint Karaoke?
Try pulling this out at your next party! 
Snapshots from the presentations of Vanilla, SafeKidZone, and devLab respectively.
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NerdTrain Destination – Montreal!
The #NerdTrain was a travel experience like no other! If I learned one thing, this is it: There are a ton of interesting people who are working on really neat projects in Montreal.
I spent a lot of time interviewing the #NerdTrain riders on their opinions of the FTW Coding Competition apps and while the camera wasn’t rolling, it was great to get the opportunity to meet each person and understand their projects a little better, whether they be development-related or otherwise. It’s really interesting that people chose apps based on the apps’ relevancy to their projects and motivations.
The TaxiCity app is a game that is just plain fun. There were a couple people on the train looking to delve deeper into the world of web development who really enjoyed this app. It captures the pleasure of creating something brand new with a range of different technologies, the essence of innovation. It was also a great app to demo in the environment of the #Nerdtrain. It totally complemented the Xbox showdowns, free drinks and tunes pumping in the train.
Find-A-Home has the potential to assist homebuyers everywhere, or that is the consensus of those #NerdTrain riders who favoured this app. Based on Edmonton’s open data, the code can potentially be transferred to make this app available to cities across the world. This commercial viability, or “legs” as we called it, was something that a lot of people liked. These were generally developers looking to bring their current projects to the next level, or try out open data app building for themselves.
Project Tholus is a favourite of RPG lovers everywhere, but also struck a chord with those working on public service-related apps. It really highlights the idea that while apps are great for fun or convenience, they can also help improve lives. I got to interview the creator of SafeKidZone, an app that prevents child abduction and can be used to generally keep people safe by giving emergency services all the tools necessary to find your position, who articulated this extremely well.
Another cool thing that was happening on the #NerdTrain: Rick Claus was conducting podcasts the entire time right from the train! I got to sit down with him for a bit to talk about Port25. Link to come!
Now I’m off to see some Ignite presentations, which I just learned are lightning-fast 5 minute presentations on current development projects. It’ll be exciting to see what else Montreal has in store!
